Monthly Archives: December 2004

The Game Of Their Lives

Posted on December 13, 2004

Most legendary matches from the World Cup over the years have been the one off upsets like the thrown together team of American amateurs who beat England 1-0 in 1950. One of the great stories, though, is the absolutely unknown North Korean team which travelled to England for the 1966 Finals, not only because they beat Italy to reach the last four–and took an early 3-0 lead against Portugal before collapsing to star Eusebio’s four goals–but for the way in which the people of Birmingham (where they were based for the opening round) took them on as favorites only a dozen years after the Korean War.

The Game Of Their Lives is a terrific documentary from Daniel Gordon which looks at the North Koreans’ 1966 experience as well as visiting the usually off-limits nation to film interviews with the (still living?) players and their manager. While the historical bits were interesting for me, always love to see some of what happened before I got to be a fan, the really meaningful moments were the interviews and scenes filmed inside North Korea.

The secretive communist regime rarely allows foreign cameras in or their people to speak to journalists and many outsiders tend to belittle the cult of Great Leader and Dear Leader (father/founder of the nation Kim Il Sung and his son/current dictator Kim Il Jong). The players, though, made heartfelt comments about their Great Leader which made me think about how different people see the same things differently. They all broke down in tears during a scene filmed at a memorial featuring a huge statue of the man who lead their country at the time of the Finals, all wishing that he were still around to guide them.

My second favorite part was the interviews with people from Birmingham who were involved in those days as fans or civic leaders. They explained how the city, whose main soccer team had just been relegated and which viewed itself as underdogs to bigger metropolises like London, quickly took to the most unlikely visitors. I guess 1966 was a simpler time than today because even if the Cold War was in full force the visiting squad and the locals easily and commonly mixed together without incident; no way that would happen today.

From a film perspective, Gordon did a good job. He intercut archival footage with new material, and paced the game footage with the other discussions. Other than explaining the two Kims and the impact of the war on North Korea early on to give context and understanding to other material, he left politics on the sideline.

recommended even for non-soccer fans

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Mystic River

Posted on December 12, 2004

Yes, it won or was nominated for a boatload of the 2003 awards. Even so, Mystic River is a decent movie. Not a great one, though, and I think the two Oscars to Penn and Robbins were more a result of not so strong competition; then again, Return of the King should have gotten more than the 11 Oscars it did.

Somewhat of a murder mystery, this film attempts to be more an exploration of what a tragic childhood event might mean to the lives–dare I say psyches?–of three boys from a blue collar Boston neighborhood, played as adults by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. The ending doesn’t answer the core question all that well and I do wonder if Dennis Lehane’s novel does it better, particularly since the screenplay was written by the less than stellar Brian Helgeland.

Clint Eastwood directed, but does not appear onscreen, and his oevre is hit and miss. Unforgiven , Play Misty for Me, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil were terrific films but what about dreck like Space Cowboys, The Rookie, and The Bridges of Madison County? I don’t see much value added from his hands in this one. For instance, he uses a recurring motif of panning from the ground up to blank, generally grey sky. Wow, that’s a psychovisual for you!

Still, my qualms are mainly in reaction to the abundance of awards and hyped reviews accorded to Mystic River that I think are based on the original novel’s reputation, Eastwood and Penn, and the topical, touching subject of the childhood tragedy instead of what’s in the celluloid. I did like this movie.

recommended

Posted in crime, family, movies, mystery, Recommended, Reviews | Comments Off

masked and anonymous

Posted on December 11, 2004

Set in a strange Latinized, banana republic America, masked and anonymous is as odd as you might expect from the combined creative efforts of Larry Charles, who came to fame as a writer on the epitomy of the big nothing, Seinfeld, and Bob Dylan (who co-wrote besides starring). The country is engulfed in a corrupt, eviscerated national gang war where no one can walk in a straight line or deliver one.

Because this is a Dylan movie, nearly all the parts are played by name, or at least recognizable, actors: Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, Bruce Dern, Jessica Lange, Christian Slater, Chris Penn, Luke Wilson, Cheech Marin, Angela Bassett, Steven Bauer, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Fred Ward, Robert Wisdom and Tracy Walter.

The movie uses many of Dylan’s own songs, sung by him, sometimes by others, some even in other languages–Dylan plays a lost and now found ’60s singer named Jack Fate, pulled out of prison to be the star of a benefit concert put on by Goodman and Lange that no name star in masked‘s America is willing to play. Though unspecified higher ups require Jack to play a set filled with songs about rebellion and revolution, such as The Beatles’ Revolution, The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again, Elvis’s Jailhouse Rock; of course he performs none of them, the closest is his own Blowin’ in the Wind. Finally, Fate is the son of the country’s (dying) dictator though only he and a select few (seem to) know this.

Plenty of the dialog surely sounds like it could be Dylan lyrics. “Sometimes when I dream my dreams become my reality,” said Giovanni Ribisi. “Imagine yourself being reincarnated in the civil war in Babylon,” said John Goodman (who looks more like a whale than any famous mainstream actor since Marlon Brando in The Score). “The seeds won’t grow if you plant them on the carpet, or the hardwood floor,” says Jessica Lange. Hell, Wilson beats Bridges to death with an old bluesman’s acoustic guitar!

The big question is does Bob Dylan act in this film or just walk through it? To me that isn’t terribly meaningful–hasn’t he been acting out in public since the earliest days of his career?

recommended

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The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Posted on December 9, 2004

Everyone’s got to be a fan of Peter Sellers, the man was a comic genius even if he did seem to be burning out just before his death at 54 in 1980. He made so many classics, among them The Mouse Who Roared (which deserves much more acclaim than it seems to get), Dr. Strangelove (which does get the acclaim it deserves), the four Pink Panther features (a role he got at the last minute when Peter Ustinov–you’ve got too be kidding me–backed out) and Being There (his last serious effort).

HBO continues its tradition of producing the best made for television movies with The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, a real yet somewhat surreal biography starring Geoffrey Rush (have you seen him in Lantana?) as Sellers, Charlize Theron as Sellers’ utterly stunning second wife Britt Eklund, Emily Watson as first wife Anne, John Lithgow as Blake Edwards (writer/director of the Pink Panther flicks, among many other great films), Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubric (who directed Strangelove) and the absolutely exquisite Sonia Aquino as Sophia Loren.

The movie is based on a serious biography by Roger Lewis and focuses on Sellers the man; it isn’t a frothy recap of his films but a psychological portrait of a man who thinks he really isn’t there. By the climax, when we see Sellers reading and then becoming determined to make the film of Jerzy Kosinsky’s novel Being There, director Stephen Hopkins no longer needs to make explicit the actor’s inner emptiness (as he’d done frequently at earlier points) nor his remarkable similarity to the book’s lead character–Rush and Hopkins collaborate to show us via facial expressions, (lack of) conversational ability and physical isolation.

Another interesting device Hopkins uses is to play on Sellers’ own common ploy of playing multiple parts in a movie by having Rush take over another character’s monologue, dressed and made up as that other character, switching while the camera briefly swings away from their face. The first time this happened, as Sellers’ father speaks, I almost didn’t catch it but once alerted it was noticed each time. The monologues by themselves are another device as they’re spoken directly to the audience (breaking the fourth wall is the term, I believe) and a mixed bag since they deliver a good bit of that explicit messaging that Hollywood insists film audiences require. Truly great films generally understand we don’t, so let’s just put this down as pretty good.

recommended

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